Mayor's 'mad scientist' experiment could backfire

In combining city bureaus of planning and sustainability,
Sam Adams risks diminishing two important operations

It's sad saying goodbye this month to the city of Portland's visionary planning director, Gil Kelley. And it's especially disconcerting to see him depart at such a suspenseful moment in the city's history.

Portland, among the best-planned cities in the world, is about to embark on the Portland Plan, to guide the city over its next few decades. True, Kelley has been planning director for nine years, a record length of service for anyone in that job.

True, as well, mayors deserve to pick the planning directors of their choice. And Mayor Sam Adams had every right to move in a new direction. Yet we can't help feeling a sense of being stranded, midstory line.

It would have been fascinating to see what Kelley, a creative force and quintessential "idea guy," would have done with the Portland Plan. Under former Mayor Tom Potter for four years, Kelley was wasted.

The Bureau of Planning sometimes seemed to be in hibernation, since planning the built environment was never a priority for Potter. Adams, to his credit, has no intention of letting the bureau slide along on autopilot. In fact, he's moving in the opposite direction.

With a wild gleam in his eye, Adams is undertaking a bureaucratic experiment that reminds us, somewhat unnervingly, of a backyard science project. He's heaving the venerable Bureau of Planning, and its roughly 90 employees, together with the Office of Sustainable Development, and its 40 to 50.

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t could work. The office, which handles solid waste and recycling and green building, knows something about good planning, since it has overseen the well-regarded city-county plans on global warming.

The Planning Bureau, likewise, knows a lot about sustainability. The implication of putting sustainability's Susan Anderson in charge is that the smaller bureau is swallowing the larger one. (But some ruffled feelings on this point were soothed, of late, by the announcement of the new name: the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.)

Under Adams' watchful eye, of course, everyone's making the right noises about synergies and blah-blah-blah. But whether this is a true merger or more of a collapse remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the very idea of the merger owes much to Kelley's blue-green vision for Portland.

Kelley will be remembered for his work, across city departments, on the River Renaissance project. Adams even paid a kind of backhanded tribute to Kelley by spinning that project off as a new office of its own under city Commissioner Amanda Fritz.

In addition to his work on the river, Kelley helped reimagine -- and expand -- Portland's downtown at both ends. Not only did he help with the Pearl District's transformation, he also pushed to transform North Macadam into the South Waterfront (even coming up with the name change).

"If it wasn't for him, the South Waterfront plan would not have been accepted," former Mayor Vera Katz said Friday. "I couldn't have done what I did without him."

It will be up to Adams to ensure that the Portland Plan is strengthened, not diminished, by Kelley's departure, and by this merger. And up to Adams, as well, to ensure that if this experiment doesn't work, he has the courage to admit it, like a real scientist, and pull the plug.